Chapter 105 - Damn Reincarnation

Senya

It was a good thing he hadn’t brought Kristina with him.

That was what Eugene thought. If she had come all the way inside with him, he would have had to start making excuses for why he had burst into tears the moment he saw Senya.

Since she hadn’t come, there was no need. Eugene gazed at Senya, wrapped in vines, and silently shed tears.

All sorts of emotions mingled within him. Questions and sorrow. Relief and anger, too. Senya wasn’t dead. She looked little different from a corpse, and her wound could easily have killed her, but she was unmistakably alive.

Tempest remained silent. He, too, felt a tumult of emotions at this sight. Senya Merdein. Of all the archmages he knew, she was unrivaled in her brilliance and power.

Three hundred years ago, no mage had surpassed Senya. Vermouth had been an extraordinary mage as well, but in understanding magic as a discipline, Senya had been several steps ahead of him.

And now that same Senya lay asleep with a hole through her chest.

After weeping for a while, Eugene scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand.

“I guess I really have gotten old,” he muttered, twisting his lips. “I don’t think I used to cry this easily.”

Was it because he was young, rather than old? That seemed possible. This reincarnated body was still only nineteen. Or... perhaps it was simply something he couldn’t help crying over. Eugene chuckled and shook his head.

“My voice. Can you hear it?”

He tried speaking to Senya and watched for a response. None came. The corners of her closed eyes didn’t tremble, her eyes didn’t move beneath her lids, and her lips didn’t so much as twitch.

Eugene didn’t lose heart. After taking several deep breaths, he reached toward Senya. What if touching her only caused harm? With that worry in mind, he extended his hand as carefully as though he were touching a tender sprout.

POP!

He never reached her. The moment his hand drew close, light burst between his fingertips and Senya. Eugene withdrew his hand without panicking.

Pale green light enveloped Senya and the vines. Soon, a solid crystal encased her, with the vines still connected to her body.

Eugene extended a finger and tapped the crystal’s surface. It was too hard to break easily. Even if he could break it, he felt that he shouldn’t.

[“... A seal.”]

“I suppose so.”

Tempest murmured, and Eugene nodded. He pressed his open palm against the crystal, closed his eyes, and concentrated. The flow of mana. The immense mana gathered within the World Tree surrounded Senya.

‘... A wound that could easily have killed her... Is the World Tree keeping her alive? What about the elves?’

He couldn’t make sense of the situation.

Two hundred years ago, someone had broken into Hamel’s tomb. Upon sensing the destruction of her familiar, Senya had immediately headed there.

She had fought the unidentified intruder. The battle had been fierce, leaving the entire tomb in ruins. Everything except the statue and the memorial stone had been destroyed.

The intruder had opened the coffin and taken out the corpse.

Why?

He didn’t know the reason. In any case, the corpse had been removed from the coffin, the Moonlight Sword had been sealed upon it, and Senya, gravely wounded, had used a leaf of the World Tree to warp here.

What had happened afterward? What could have left the city empty, driven the elves here to sleep inside the World Tree, sealed Senya away, and erased the memories of this domain from the minds of the elves outside?

“Would it have killed you to leave a letter?”

Grumbling, Eugene turned away. He drew a clear distinction between what he could and couldn’t do. That seal wasn’t something to tamper with carelessly. Senya’s injuries were so severe that she could die at any moment. Eugene wasn’t an expert in such matters.

Seals aside, there was an expert in injuries and healing waiting outside.

Have you been crying?

Normally, Kristina might have teased him like that. Now, she simply couldn’t. So she kept her mouth shut. His bloodshot eyes and tear-streaked cheeks were plain to see, yet she said nothing about them.

“... It’s like a cradle.”

Instead, she spoke of something else. Kristina murmured as she passed the elves buried within the tangled vines.

“I guess everyone thinks alike. That’s what I thought when I saw this place, too.”

Eugene answered with a faint chuckle. His voice sounded no different from usual.

Together, they went deeper into the World Tree.

“... Ah.”

Kristina saw the woman with her eyes closed inside the crystal. Senya the Wise. Without Eugene needing to tell her, she recognized who the woman was. Steadying her trembling breath, Kristina approached the crystal.

There was no need to ask what she should do. The hole in the middle of Senya’s chest. The World Tree’s vines woven through it. The faint heartbeat and breathing. Kristina stood before the crystal and drew the wand at her waist.

Brilliant light enveloped her. With light shining in her eyes, she gazed at Senya.

“... Her heart has been destroyed.”

Kristina’s eyes were now looking inside Senya’s body.

“And not just her heart. Most of her vital organs... have been contaminated.”

“... Contaminated?”

“Yes. They haven’t been broken apart like her heart, but they aren’t functioning properly.”

“But she’s alive.”

“... Yes.”

It was a miracle she was alive at all. Kristina didn’t say that aloud. She felt she shouldn’t.

“... These injuries could easily have killed her. No, they should have killed her. But magic is sustaining her life.”

“Can you save her?”

Those words carried such weight that Kristina couldn’t answer lightly. She hesitated for a moment, then drew in a breath and nodded.

“I’ll try.”

Kristina held her wand before her chest and closed both eyes. Each time the blue gem set in the center of the cross glimmered, light spread outward as though resonating with it.

Eugene stepped back a few paces. Amid the light, Kristina’s lips moved. A large cross appeared beneath her feet, and strange characters formed around it, drawing a magic circle.

The strength of divine magic depended on faith. What Kristina was casting now was a restoration spell of the highest order, one that very few priests even within the Holy Empire could wield. It was precisely to secure access to such restoration magic that wealthy magnates from other countries donated astronomical sums to the Holy Empire every year.

As long as a person was still alive, they could be saved. It was no exaggeration to call restoration magic of this caliber a miracle rather than magic.

Or so it should have been.

Sweat trickled down Kristina’s forehead. Her closed eyes tightened as she concentrated and drew upon her divine power. It might be no exaggeration to call it a miracle, but did that mean it was still no true miracle in the end? The light she emitted passed through the crystal and flowed into Senya’s body, yet Senya’s wound didn’t heal in the slightest.

Nor was it only the visible wound. Kristina’s light failed to purify the unknown contamination inside Senya’s body. No, it couldn’t purify it. Kristina understood instinctively: this contamination wasn’t something she could simply interfere with and cleanse. After being etched into Senya’s flesh for hundreds of years, it had become tightly bound to her mana, as though it were now a part of her very existence.

‘What in the world is this...?’

She had never seen a body contaminated like this. Was it some kind of curse? Senya the Wise. Could a curse capable of ravaging the greatest mage in history to this extent truly exist?

Her divine power flowed backward. Kristina bit down hard on her lip and focused her mind. Though her eyes were closed, she could still see everything around her clearly. Senya’s body repelling the light of divine power. The near-miraculous restoration spell scattering uselessly.

Eugene’s eyes filling with sorrow as he watched beside her. She hated that look. She had so boldly declared herself a saint, and she didn’t want to appear helpless at the very moment a miracle was needed.

He had mocked her, asking whether turning cookie crumbs into bread and water into wine counted as miracles. He had sneered, asking whether she couldn’t reattach severed limbs. If she failed to perform a real miracle now, he would keep mocking her...

RING!

Kristina swayed.

Was it impossible?

Eugene braced himself inwardly. If it couldn’t be done, there was nothing for it. Kristina was sweating profusely as she cast her divine magic, but Senya’s wound wasn’t healing.

He was about to reach out and tell her to stop there.

But something was strange about Kristina’s reaction.

“You’ve pushed yourself too hard.”

As she swayed and began to collapse, he reached out to catch her. Divine power was rooted in faith, but that didn’t make it limitless. Like mana, it would eventually run dry if used too freely.

WHOOSH!

Light engulfed his outstretched hand. Eugene stared at Kristina, his eyes widening. One, two, three... Eight wings emerged behind her back.

Wings made of light. Beneath them, something rose. Half joined to Kristina, the being spread its eight wings and looked up at the ceiling.

An angel.

“... Anise?”

The name escaped Eugene before he knew it. The angel he had seen at Black Lion Castle when he fell into Vermouth’s tomb. There was no doubt. He hadn’t imagined it. The angel resembled Kristina, but she was a different person, and her face was identical to that of Anise as Eugene remembered her three hundred years ago.

The angel lowered her head. With eyes shining blue, she looked at Kristina, who was joined to her, then looked ahead. There lay Senya, engulfed in crystal and vines. After gazing at her for a moment, the angel turned her head.

Then she looked at Eugene.

A smile spread across her previously emotionless face. Her eyes curved, and the corners of her mouth lifted. That slight smile was exactly the smile of the Anise Eugene—Hamel—knew.

“... Anise.”

Eugene spoke again, his voice trembling. The angel—Anise—didn’t answer. Her smile was unchanged from three hundred years ago, her eight wings were wondrous, and her light-wreathed form looked more benevolent and sacred than at any time in the past when she had boasted of being a saint.

Her eight outspread wings shone. The wand held in Kristina’s limp hand floated into the air. The gem set at the very center of the cross emitted a blue glow, as though resonating with the light of divine power.

Eugene couldn’t understand what was happening, or what was about to happen. He had never experienced anything like it in his previous life, and the magical knowledge he had acquired in this life couldn’t explain it either.

All he could do was watch.

Light raged like a storm, then swallowed everything around him and painted over it.

...

A burst of light flashed across his vision. Before he knew it, Eugene was gazing at a scene he had never witnessed.

The elven city. All the elves who must have lived there had left the city and gathered before the World Tree. They wore desperate expressions and shouted something, but he couldn’t hear their words.

A terror that left them no choice but to despair. The being who had brought it hovered high in the sky. A man wrapped entirely in a pitch-black cloak. He looked familiar. Sleek, long hair. Scarlet eyes. A twisted smile.

When the five Demon Kings rose, one race had been the first to resist them.

Dragons.

Among them was a traitor who had betrayed his race’s leader and torn open that leader’s chest. The first dragon in their history to commit the sin of devouring his own kind, he had willingly contaminated his own being with demonic energy and joyfully embraced corruption.

The Black Dragon, Raizakia.

He hovered in the sky, looking down at the elves. Behind him, the sky warped grotesquely, breaking apart and falling. With the sun at his back, darkness spread from Raizakia. That spreading darkness turned the sky above the elven domain to night.

Raizakia’s lips moved as he said something. The elves cried out. Eugene could hear none of it. But he could clearly see Raizakia’s smile twisting. The cloak wrapped around his entire body writhed.

Then Raizakia shed his human form. Black light burst forth, and a gigantic dragon spread its wings high in the sky. Scales stained pitch-black by corruption. Enormous eyes that seemed filled to the brim with blood. As Raizakia opened his jaws wide, black light gathered between his sharp teeth.

A breath attack. It wasn’t complex enough to be called magic. Any dragon could unleash one. But Raizakia’s breath was incomparable to that of other dragons. The world didn’t call him a Demon King, but the Raizakia Eugene remembered was a monster on par with one.

And now Raizakia was unleashing his breath in earnest. There was no chance the elves here could withstand it. In other words, everything would be annihilated.

Facing that breath attack, the elves sensed their deaths approaching. Every one of them braced for it.

The moment the black breath poured forth, someone stepped out from behind the elves.

It was Senya. No blood flowed from the gaping hole in her chest. But her face was utterly bloodless, making her look like a corpse that had begun to move.

When Raizakia unleashed his breath, Senya was behind all the elves.

When its light burst forth, Senya was in front of them all.

Senya extended her hand. Raizakia’s breath could advance no farther. His enormous eyes filled with shock.

Black blood trickled from Senya’s lips as she repelled the breath attack.

The elves screamed and clung to her. Black blood was flowing from their eyes, noses, and mouths as well.

The World Tree’s roots surged upward and wrapped around Senya and the elves.

As the roots enveloped her, Senya clenched her outstretched hand. The entire space Raizakia occupied twisted, and the darkness he commanded began to scatter.

Raizakia hurriedly spread his wings and writhed. Dozens, hundreds of magic circles appeared around him. He shouted something—no, screamed. The magic circles he had created were steadily eaten away and vanished.

Pouring out black blood, Senya gazed at Raizakia. Whatever she found so funny, she laughed with her shoulders shaking, then lightly shook her outstretched fist.

Only her middle finger rose.

The moment Senya flipped him off, Raizakia’s gigantic body was sucked beyond the distorted space. Eugene watched it all in a daze.

Senya staggered and fell. The elves tried to catch her, but they, too, collapsed one after another before they could take more than a few steps.

“Crybaby, crybaby~”

Eugene flinched, his shoulders hunching. Until a moment ago, he had been watching the past from hundreds of years ago. And now? What was this?

“Crybaby, crybaby.”

An illusion? A dream? Or some trick of the Holy Sword? The angel. Anise...? His mind was a jumble. Eugene clutched his throbbing head and groaned.

“Crybaby, crybaby...”

What in the world was going on? Raizakia had disappeared. What had happened? Why had he been up in the sky above the elven domain? What about Senya? The elves... what had happened to them afterward...?

“... Crybaby, crybaby.”

What he was seeing now...

“Why don’t you answer me?”

Eugene couldn’t say a word.

“You fool, moron, idiot.”

Beneath a gigantic tree.

“And a crybaby, too.”

Pale violet hair fluttered.

“I never knew you cried so much.”

“...”

“Just look at you now.”

Senya smiled brightly.

“You’re crying again, Hamel.”